These Hollow Men
by Catch18
Summary: Post Reichenbach angst. Trigger warnings for suicide.  Character death obvs.


**(I do not own or profit from these characters. Gatiss, Moffat and ACD do.)**

The smell of melting butter drifts down the hallway along with the staccato crackling of frying. Seb walks through the hall biting his lip trying to stop the unstoppable grin breaking out on his face. He loses the battle as he steps into the kitchen and sees Jim.

His shirt sleeves are rolled up and Seb's can't help but watch the muscles shifting under his skin as he swirls the pan. Jim turns, places his hands around Seb's face and pulls him into a kiss. Seb's hands fall onto his hips and he melts under the man's hands faster than the butter sizzling in the pan.

Seb blinked and shivered. His fingers touched his lips. He could still feel where Jim had… Jim had never kissed him. For a moment reality had shifted to the side. Like a dream, but now he was awake, the false existence skittering away from him in less than a moment. The flat was empty, filled with the bone chilling cold that only empty houses have. Each surface was carpeted with a fine layer of dust giving the scene an unsaturated, defocused gloom.

Rather deliberately Seb had managed to forget exactly how dead Jim was. Each movement of the last two years of his life had been carefully orchestrated by a dead man. Intricate instructions carefully carried out until the empire was wound so tight it would run for decades on hollow whispers. Seb's feet hadn't hit the ground until this very moment and he was only just realising how far he had fallen from.

Seb walked along the corridor trailing his fingers through the dust. Like leaving footprints in the snow of a dead land. Each step placing more firmly in his mind the fact that Jim. Was. dead. Completely and utterly gone forever. The fact sat coiled in the pit of his stomach thick and black and cloying.

Thinking about it now, for the first time, the worst thing seemed to be the loss of all the things that could have happened. Loss of possibilities. He could have stood a little closer. He could have kissed him. He could have done absolutely nothing and it would have been more than this.

Seb can smell hot water. He glances at the bathroom door and steam is curling out from under the door. Jim is singing in the shower, "You're a bum, you're a punk, you're a slut on junk almost dead on a drip in that bed."

And Seb can't help but join in, "You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot." He snaps his hand out to the doorknob, Jim never locked the door. Not since the time Seb ha- He blinked. The door swung open. The bathroom was empty.

Seb stepped into the room and rubbed his face. He had been so sure. How could he forget that Jim had died twice in five minutes? "I need to think rationally," he muttered to the man who wasn't there, "and have a drink."

He stumbled into the living room. A bottle of whiskey stood upon the table glinting at him, a tumbler beside it. Odd. Jim had never drunk whiskey. The one time Seb had convinced him to drink it, Jim had spat it right back in Seb's face. The memory twisted painfully in his gut causing him to reach for the bottle and shakily pour a glass. He raised the glass making the dust in the liquid wobble, "to Jim."

"Oh, Sebastian dear," Seb freezes. He can hear the mischievous edge in Jim's voice, the one he uses when he wanted to do unspeakable things to Seb in that bed of theirs.

Jim's hands curl around Seb's hips as he sidled up behind him. "Don't turn around," he whispers.

Seb gasps, turning, "I thought you were dead-" glass shatters at his feet sending diamond shards and golden liquid shooting out from the epicentre before sinking down between the floorboards. His attention's caught for less than a moment, but when he looks up Jim is gone.

Not another dream, it was too real, "Jim?" he called. Not another dream. He tore into Jim's bedroom, he'd heard him, he was sure of it. Empty. The covers messy, slept in, once white are stained grey with dust. Another dream. Jim was dead again.

It hit him like it had hit him in Switzerland. Like it hit him when he had to clear out the office. Like it hit him in the hall. In the bathroom. Jim was dead. He fell to the ground at the side of Jim's bed. His body was untouched, but his heart was battered. He's tired. So much more tired than any late night had ever made him. It was in his bones. Trapped tight in his ribcage. When his eyes fall shut he hopes they never open. He hopes he dreams of Jim.

Jim sits down beside him.

"What is this? Is this what could've happen if-"

"If you'd actually _done_ something?" Seb nods, tears dripping off his face into his lap.

He shakes his head, "No, no it's not possible. You'd never do this."

Jim snaps towards him snarling, "I would've done it with you, Sebastian," Seb buries his face into his knees. He's shaking.

Jim sat back and whispered in a sing song voice, "No one ever gets to me. And no one ever did," a sob racks Seb's body and a noise made of two years of unacknowledged heartbreak rips itself from his lungs.

Suddenly Jim is thoughtful, "You know…" Seb looks up, "You always said a man like me ought to sleep with a gun under his pillow," Jim glances at his pillow. Seb's hand creeps upwards under the pillow until cold metal grazes his fingertips. He pulls his hand out clutching the Walther P99 he'd 'lost' three years previously.

"Please, please I can't do this alone." Jim leans forward and puts his hand over Seb's. He feels his hand being guided up by the dead man's fingers as they lean together. Jim's breath tickles his lips. He closes his eyes, the tears still falling from his face, and his lips fell onto nothing. His finger onto the trigger. [_The supplication of a dead man's hand._]

Sebastian's life did not end with a bang or with a whimper. But with both.

**AN** So yeah... thanks for reading it 3 Hope it made at least a little sense...

Feedback would be the best. It's kinda different to what I'm used to writing and I tried a weird thing with the tenses (present tense in the hallucinations and past in the real (?) bits)

Uh... with regards to the hallucinations... they sprang into my head so they aren't based on any particular mental disorder although they seem a bit like psychotic depression or schizophrenia (although that's just from reading a couple of Wikipedia articles, and stuff off the telly).

The song lyrics are from Fairytale of New York.

And some bits are inspired by The Hollow Men (Hence the dodgy title...)


End file.
